Creative Ecologies; Where Thinking Is a Proper Job by John Howkins
I found it most interesting in setting the stage for the increasing role that information has been playing in industrial economies since the 1800s and its rising dominance in the last 30-40 years. He sets out an understanding of “the creative” as contrasted to “the repetitive.” Creativity is diverse, unstable, fluid, complex, collaborative…. Repetition is unified, rigid, controlled, linear, and competitive. Etc, etc.

The Gift; Creativity and the Artists in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde.
This book is winding and somewhat convoluted but it did introduce to me the concept/contrast of a Gift Economy AND a Market Economy. Art, Culture and Creativity, to me, depend upon this gift economy. “Those who are sojourners to their gifts, not “owners…” even the creations—especially their creations— do not belong to them.”

Patterns of Knowledge AND Urban Implications Research Articles by Elizabeth Currid
In these two very dense research article, Currid considers what makes art and cultural environments productive and thriving in the post-industrial era. She conducted numerous in-depth interviews and applied geographic information system data across several “advanced” service sectors (professional, management, media, finance, art and culture, engineering and high technology).